The Pillaging of an Empire

by Amanda Clover

  “Something’s ahead.”

  Pata slowed, looked back at the lamia dimly. “Hm?”

  The eyes of the serpent woman seemed to glow in the dark. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Pata listened. Her brow furrowed as something did reach her. A distant murmur of sound. A gasping and panting. The sound of a woman. A woman… in pleasure. Pata felt her face heat up. She knew those sounds well. Gods knew enough had come from her. But more, she’d heard them on her hunts. In freeing women caught in the grasp of monsters, their corruptive natures eroding the wills of the poor girls, turning them into willing pleasure slaves to the monster’s hungers. Sluts eager to take the pounding cocks of their inhuman mates.

  Pata set her face and moved forward.

  The sounds grew, and soon enough Pata found their source. The tunnel opened up into a large room. A natural chamber instead of a carved one. Water pooled here and there, dripping from stalactites and into low pools. The spongy creep blossomed thick here, surging from walls, the miasma of the hive so heavy it formed a low green mist about the floor, masking its true nature. The walls seemed to breathe. To thump. To swell and deflate. Other passages branched off from it, but the main sight was at the far end.

  Before Pata, askew as if dropped carelessly into the chamber by some giant, was the vault of the gnomish workshop. Whatever cataclysm had wrenched it beneath the earth had not destroyed that monument. It made up the fair wall, the creep of the anorax’s lair not quite covering it, the doorway open to the air.

  But they were not alone.

  Pata looked down from the gnomish structure and across the floor. Despite the sea of miasma that whispered and seethed, she could just make out a number of pits worked into the floor. The gasping whimpers of pleasure were coming from a young woman, her head just visible, her eyes dim and distant.

  “Gods,” Pata gasped. She hurried across the room, the miasma stirring around her feet, tickling her nose and making her flush deepen. She reached the girl and kneeled next to her. “Are you alright?”

  “Gods… oh gods…” the woman panted.

  “Miss. Can you hear me?”

  “I…I…”

  Pata leaned down, touched the girl’s shoulder.

  Like a trap sprung the woman’s arms jerked up, grabbed Pata and yanked her close. The huntress had time to gasp before a pair of soft lips were pressed against her own, and her body against the girl’s.

  The sudden movement stirred the miasma, and Pata saw the rest of her attacker.

  Ample curves that were more than natural. The girl’s stomach was swollen and heavy with the eggs of monsters. Her breasts were fat and full, milk dribbling from her stiff nipples as Pata rubbed against them. Her thighs were bare but for the faint marks of scratches, her pussy gaping and drooling with her juices. A breeder. A corrupted.

  Pata was shocked to paralysis. She struggled, pulled and broke that lurid kiss with a gasp, only to inhale another lungful of the miasma. Her head swam, spun. Her body ached. She felt so weak. So tender and soft.

  “Moooore,” the girl moaned, rubbing against Pata, her grip strong with a sort of desperate need for stimulus. “Please!”

  Pata panted, the girl’s mons pressing against her leg, humping her desperately, her slick juices staining the huntress’s leather. Oh gods. Oh gods this was too much. Pata’s heart pounded. Her pussy tingled delightfully with eager need to fuck this girl. Her hands trembled.

  The girl sensed her hesitation. Moaned eagerly. “Yes. Yes! Master. Master. Breed me! Fuck me!”

  Master?

  “Pata!”

  Out of the corner of her eye the huntress saw the monster rise from the mist. Its chitinous form hunched forward, jaw opening, revealing the rows of teeth. A hiss slithered through the air as it raised its scything claws.

  Xima’s tail swung out, hitting the anorax like a log. The monster took the impact full in the chest, flung on its back, its shriek of anger and shock piercing through the air, stabbing through the mist of desire and arousal consuming Pata. With a sudden burst of strength she jerked herself out of the woman’s arms, the pregnant slut crying out with weak protest as the huntress spun about.

  The mists churned where the anorax had fallen. It surged back to its feet, jaws open, the ground hissing as its saliva burned into the ground. Pata swung her blade, intercepting a long claw with a clang. Silver flashed as she dragged it against the creature’s curving claw. She ducked beneath its guard, turned, reversed her blade. Her back hit the monster’s chest, and she plunged her sword into the creature’s heart.

  The anorax wailed in pain, shuddering as she jerked her sword, forcing it up and deeper into the creature’s vitals. Its ichor oozed from its chest as she stepped away. Without her body holding it up, the monster toppled to the ground.

  Xima was instantly at her side, grabbing her shoulders. “Pata! Pata, are you alright?”

  Pata managed a shaky nod. “Yes. Yes, Xima. I am. Thanks. Thank you…”

  Pata wrenched her eyes from the corpse of the anorax, forcing herself to ignore the moan of the wretched woman still lounging among the mists. Her eyes focused on the ruin at the end of the chamber. “Let’s hurry. That won’t go unnoticed. Let’s finish this.”

  Pata hastened across the chamber and to the gaping door. The fleshy floor rippled as she walked, sending a shudder of disgust racing through her. They reached the doorway moments later, Pata slowing. A hallway lay before them, ending at another entrance, the miasma leaking thickly from it.

  A shiver raced through the huntress at the sight of the passage. A sense of something powerful beyond. Pata tightened her fist around the hilt of her sword.

  “Xima? Stay here, Make sure nothing interrupts.”

  “Hm?” The lamia twisted around to stare at the huntress. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I have to do this alone…”

  The lamia pursed her lips, but after a moment gave a curt nod. “Alright. But if you don’t come back, don’t expect me to stick around.”

  The monster’s words teased just a hint of a smile from the huntress. Then she was off, walking down the corridor and towards the end.

  The doorway led into a large chamber. Massive, really. The ceiling was vaulted like a cathedral, but not to any god Pata would name. Creep covered the walls in a thick mass, oozing from every corner. Fleshy sacks bulged from them, pulsing. Mounding the walls and floor in a grotesque display of corruption. The miasma seeped across the floor, saturating the air so thickly Pata could barely breathe. Her body tingled, even the touch of her clothes almost too much for the huntress’s agonizingly sensitive skin.

  But the creep didn’t consume all. At the far end of the room, a pillar of solid silver rose, shining like moonlight made physical. A display, its peak holding in its grasp a strange amulet. A sapphire inset in a frame of metal whose colour shifted mercurially. The stone’s hexagonal pattern reflecting a dozen different views of the room.

  Pata was breathing heavily. The prize. What they had sacrificed and fought for. She took a step forward.

  Something moved in the mists.

  Pata twisted around, sword rising, ready. The mists swirled, and a creature rose. Four arms ended in grasping claws. The lower half of the creature swelled in a heavy egg sack, its head a smooth dark dome. Its body reminded Pata weirdly of a cross between a plant and an insect. Six huge legs raised the pillar of its body, interlocking plates running down its back and over its eggsack. Four eyes opened in the head, green light bleeding from those almond shaped slits.

  The queen hissed, a sound that slithered through Pata, humming through the very fibre of the young huntress’s being. Then, it moved.

  Fast. Deceptively fast for such bulk. Pata barely had time to dive out of the way before it swept past where she’d been. She bounded back to her feet, slashing at the queen’s body as it passed her by. Her sword clanged off chitin hard as stone, rebounding just in time for her to raise it, parrying a swiping claw.

  Pata stepped back,
watching as the queen rose before her again. Too big. Too strong. And the mists were so thick. So pungent. She panted, her cunny slick, her breasts aching. Her legs quivering, her pussy slick and hot as a forge. The queen was a creature. A monster. A guardian and mother of her hide. Pata didn’t want to fight her. She couldn’t win. The realization hit her like a punch to the face.

  Her sword clanged to the ground.

  The queen paused, hissing, her talons clicking uncertainly. Pata stepped forward, tilting back her head, gazing into the face of the queen. She reached up to the buckles on her chest and tore them free, her breasts bursting into the open. She reached down, fairly gasping in relief as she opened the straps which masked her cunt, baring that pert, pink flesh, already glistening with her desire.

  The queen made no move as Pata began to walk towards her. Every step opened another buckle, shed another layer. Soon enough her shapely curves were fully revealed, flushed, her pussy twitching as tendrils of miasma stroked her legs and cunt.

  Pata reached the uncertain queen. She put her hands on its front, shivering as she felt the unholy pulse of its life beneath the shell of chitin. The essence of this broodmother to the monsters who had nearly claimed her.

  The queen hissed, straightening sharply in shock as Pata’s presence seemed to thrum through her. Its hiss lowered to something deeper. More guttural.

  “Yes,” Pata murmured. “Please. Do it.”

  The queen chirped. Her exoskeleton seemed to peel back, and strange, fleshy tendrils unwound themselves. The dexterous limbs touched the huntress, making her gasp and arch as those dozen tentacles slid over her soft skin, layering her with a strange, viscous slime that made her whimper and pant. Exploring her. Admiring her soft, fertile curves. Her whole body seemed alive. Sensitive. And desperately horny.

  Pata didn’t fight it as the tendrils looped around her arms, her waist. Lifted her into the air. She surrendered to their touch. Their strokes. She trembled as they teased against her pussy.

  “Ah!” she gasped, arms tightening with the first touch of pleasure. The tentacles slithered against her hot pussy, teasing along her cunny, feeling her. Stroking her.

  Sliding into her.

  “Mnnnn!” Pata moaned, arching in the grasp of the tentacles as one pushed inside her, squeezed by her molten cunny. “Ohhh yessss,” Pata moaned as the tentacle began to stroke and tease her, investigating the hot passage of her clutching depths. Pata panted. Gasped, twitched.

  The queen crooned, an echo of the huntress’s pleasure finding root in the creature’s mind. Its teasing tendril stroked the soft flesh of the young woman more eagerly. Fascinated. Hungry. Pata gasped, her hips twitching, fucking herself against the invading tentacle.

  “Oh. Oh gods. Yes. Yes! There. Right there. Oh please. Please… I’m… Mnnn… I’m close… More. More. Please!”

  The queen understood. It too wanted more. More of this soft pink form. A body so eager for pleasure. So submissive. So delicate and sensitive. Fascinating took over her. Fear. Anger. Primal emotions set aside for a new one. Two new tentacles rose over Pata. Her eyes widened at the sight of a pair of sucking cups. She understood without even asking. She pushed out her chest, and those two cups found her nipples.

  “Yessssss!” Pata gasped as the cups fairly engulfed her plush tits, sucking hungrily at them. “Yesss! Oh gods… oh gods! Mnnn! Yesss! Suck them! Fuck me! Oh gods yes! Yesss! More!”

  The queen loomed over her. It seemed to know exactly how to touch her. How to tease her. How to pleasure this acutely sensitive woman in its grasp. A familiarity with her body that was growing. The pleasure rocking Pata echoing in the creature. Its carapace clicking, rippling with awareness of this growing desire. This tightening pleasure.

  The queen’s legs moved, clicking as it worked Pata’s body. Eager. So eager for her orgasm. Desperate for it. And Pata was so close. So near. So sensitive and attuned to the monster as she rocked and gasped and twitched with overwhelming sensations.

  “Yes. Yes! Oh gods. Gods yes. Yes! Please! More. Just a bit more. Just a bit… a bit… oh goooooods!”

  Pata’s scream of ecstasy rang through the room. A height. A peak. A sensation of purest pleasure reverberating through her and beyond. She felt the queen stiffen. Those tentacles within her twitch, freezing.

  Oh.

  Ohhhhhh!

  It was always a delight for her to feel the sharing of such ecstasy. The joining of pleasure between a huntress and a monster. Amplified through each other.

  The tentacles holding Pata began to move again. Began to stroke and tease her pliant, willing flesh. Pata moaned, arching in their grasp, her nipples throbbing in those sucking lips as the queen began to tease and experiment, seeking new forms of the delights of pleasure. Those wonders of flesh.

  Pata was more than happy to give them. Her body was an instrument of delights. Of pleasures unending. She cried out, another orgasm wracking her form, surging through her in a height of heat and wonderful ecstasy. The queen shuddered, sharing with her that orgasm, drawing the two of them together. Wrapping them together in a shared delight of flesh and pleasure.

  And Pata began to know.

  It came to her in visions. Clear. Crisp. Flowing into her mind as pleasure thrummed through her body. Images of a world beyond the caves and mountains. Thoughts of a place far distant from Istanov and Heimsvak. Confused impressions of fear and terror. Of flight. Of fire and swords and sorcery.

  An image loomed sudden and large. A red robe and a mask. A hand that grasped the queen and bore her away. When the queen recovered she was in the mines. In the chamber.

  “You’re the last,” the man had said, and the queen knew it was true. “The last of your kind. What a pity. Or maybe not. Still. There might be purpose in that.”

  The man had left soon after. The queen was alone. She could no longer hear the song of the greater hive. The harmony of the queens across the worlds. She was the last. The last.

  She was alone.

  Pata felt that loneliness like a great ache. Her moan was a whimper of sorrow for the queen as the realization struck. She felt then the instinctual purpose of the anorax queen. How she built her hive. Took the females of humans to breed. To fill with eggs and spread her children. She would survive. She needed to survive.

  Pata felt this all. Knew it with all the sorrow the queen had known.

  “I’ll… I’ll tell no one…” Pata gasped as the tentacles within her continued to move. To pleasure her. “But… but I came for something. Please…”

  The queen loomed over her, green eyes glowing intently. Looking at her. Reading her. So bound by pleasure, she knew the truth of what Pata spoke. That the young huntress would keep her word. For the sacrifices made had been so great.

  Reluctantly, the queen lowered Pata to the ground. The huntress whimpered as the tentacles were withdrawn from her clutching pussy, released her full breasts from their suckling grasp. The queen turned, her coiling limbs delicately picking up the amulet on the peak of the pillar. Brought it around to her.

  Panting, Pata took her prize. In shaking hands she clasped it to her chest, the relief of her mission done racing through her. She lifted her head. “My… my sisters? What…”

  Sorrow again filled her. A pity for her. A vision shot into the young huntress from eyes within the hive.

  “Yes! Yes! Oh gods. Yes! Breed me! Fuck me! Mnnnnn!” Anda cried, thrusting back against the ovipositor of the anorax warrior, her once toned form gravid with eggs, her ass and cunt stuffed, her tits mashed against the floor as she took the ruthless breeding stick of her monstrous master.

  A second vision followed the first. A misty room and a pit. Sanna lay against the fleshy wall of the creep, moaning, her eyes dim as a pair of grubs sucked the milk from her heavy breasts, her pants and gasps joining the chorus of a dozen other women heaped in the chamber, their pregnant forms gravid with the weight of their master’s eggs, bearing the young of a new generation of anorax.

  Pata knew in an instan
t that the two huntress’s minds were broken. Lost. Shattered under the pleasure of the monster’s brood and the miasma they exuded. No more than gravid breeding stock like so many others for the monstrous hive.

  Pata bowed her head, feeling the sting of tears. “I… I understand.”

  The queen chittered. It was sorry, but nothing could be done. Pata stood, heart heavy. Her hand tightened around the amulet as she picked up her scattered clothes. Her arms and legs ached, trembling with the aftershocks of her orgasm. The joining between her and the queen lingering like a strand of molten light. How easy it would be to remain. To be with the queen. To join her sisters in the endless pleasures of the hive.

  Pata fought against those feelings, knowing them for what they were. The lusts of the queen. The monster’s influence infesting her. Many huntresses had been undone by that. That terrible joining. During the trials of the island, those that fell and could not be broken from that curse were used as breeding stock, birthing the creatures that would test the next generation of huntresses.

  But Pata had a mission. A task. It steeled her enough to turn her back on the queen and move, walking shakily from the room. She felt that connection with the queen grow taught, the longing of the monster for it. To sense another as she once had her fellow queens.

  And like a thread stretched too far, it snapped.

  The queen’s song of sorrow and loss followed Pata to the entrance of the passage, and the breeding chamber beyond. Xima waited there. The lamia lifted herself to her full height, the relief in her slitted eyes palpable.

  “Did you get what you came for?”

  Pata nodded. Wordlessly she revealed the amulet.

  The lamia glanced at her lover’s face. Her coils slowly moved, wrapping around Pata softly. “C’mon,” the monster said, her voice almost tender. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Pata couldn’t answer. She merely let the serpent carry her along and out of the chamber, back towards the surface. Pata felt the presence of the warrior breed of the hive watch them go, lurking in tunnels and branching passages. But none intruded. The queen was letting her go. But then, it had no reason to stop her. The amulet meant nothing to the anorax. But it had gotten something else. Two, in fact. A trade, Pata wondered, fingering the amulet?